


Set Your Spirit Free

by Merixcil



Series: Advent Fics 2019 [22]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Past Abuse, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: When the fire has passed, nothing can ever glow so bright again
Relationships: Audrey Horne & Laura Palmer
Series: Advent Fics 2019 [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916806
Kudos: 2





	Set Your Spirit Free

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: [2 Become 1 by The Spice Girls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5jsa1lR9c)  
> 

Audrey followed her once, to the edge of town and across the tracks, past the train cars and the cabins to some other town that she may have known the name of by daylight but couldn’t tell you the first thing about under cover of dark. Laura had been happy, smiling, till the music started and her eyes glazed over and all the drugs she took that night weren’t enough to bring her back. 

Laura was wild. This Audrey knows because she was the only one who cared to know. Donna could have understood so much if she had only pulled her head out of her ass and tried to understand people on their own terms for five minutes. 

She wakes in hospital, a month after the accident at the bank to discover that Pete Martell is dead and Special Agent Dale Cooper is gone. And she never got to say goodbye to either of them. Her father is sat at the end of her bed, dozing with a book open in his lap, so far from where she last saw him that Audrey almost believes he’s just a fever dream. 

She has brain damage, apparently. But she feels fine. She breathes deep and her lungs fill with the chemical disinfectant stench of the hospital. They’re nowhere near Twin Peaks anymore, somewhere much larger and much closer to Olympia. All Audrey wants is to go home. She begs and begs through the physical therapy and the endless battery of tests. She begs so hard that by the time she gets home she can’t remember why she ever wanted to be here at all. 

This town stinks of smoke. The Log Lady has died, the FBI have packed up and left, Laura was found wrapped in plastic on a beach by Pete Martell who is also dead. Catherine Martell has fled and the mill has shut down. The spark has gone out of Twin Peaks. Even the owls that practically infest these woods no longer send shivers up Audrey’s spine when she hears them crying in the night. Where the hell has she found herself? Where the hell does she want to be?

Her father may care all the more, but Audrey is getting old enough to take charge of herself. So she crosses the tracks, finds herself somewhere that she doesn’t quite recognise, and the drugs don’t do anything to transport her farther from there. 

Sometimes she swears she can see Laura on street corners, muddled by the lights, on the arm of someone who will claim to love her and break her even further. It may not be entirely real but something is still there, and it’s the last remotely interesting thing in this whole stinking town. Audrey wants to follow it, to find, to discover. 

She wishes Cooper and Denise were here. They’d help her, they’d take her seriously, they’d listen. The only person left to listen to Audrey Horne is Audrey Horne herself. So she packs a bag, not intending to run away but intending to be gone long enough that her absence will be felt. She doesn’t tell her parents because they’d only beg her not to go, instead leaving a note to be found on her pillow. It’s only as she’s starting up the mountain that she realises it might look like a suicide note, and right before Christmas as well. 

Audrey will be back. She’s already decided to promise herself that much. The woods are cold and damp, everything sticking to her at an odd angle. It smells like they’ve been clearing on the far side of the peak, the smoke trickling down through the trees but getting thicker as she goes. Higher and higher, searching for something that she swears she can feel just beyond the ends of her fingertips. 

All of a sudden, the air grows thin and intransigent. Logically, Audrey knows she could keep going, but she’s not meant to, this place is not for her. 

White wings flash up ahead, a barn owl early to the hunt, perhaps. Moving silently, no sound to scare. Audrey holds up her hand, expecting to touch the wall between the worlds but nothing is there. It’s just smoke, just air, just more. 

So much more. There is a smiling face just inches from her own, how could she have not seen it before? Too many teeth, too many eyes. Still Laura, her wings stretched out behind her. Safe, divine, exactly where she wants to be. 

Audrey sucks in a breath that drags too much forward with it. It bubbles and protests against the confines of her lungs, screaming. 

Screaming.

It screams, she screams. It settles. 

Audrey opens her eyes. Laura opens her eyes. A thousand owls open their eyes. They are together, they are breathing, they are here in this world and they are in the other worlds as well, every step they take carefully mapped onto the splits in their dimensions. 

That’s something, that’s new. The smell of smoke no longer registers to Audrey, as she straightens herself out and prepares to carry them all back down the mountain. 

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'advent fics' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have


End file.
